


The Left Hand of Solomon

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch discovers peace in a place he hadn't planned to look.<br/>This story contains Bible quotations and religious comments that could be considered offensive to some.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Left Hand of Solomon

Ken Hutchinson hadn't intentionally picked up a Bible in years. He gently traced the gold letters on the soft leather cover, reluctant to look inside.

When in a hotel room, he'd occasionally flipped through the Gideon Bible from the bedside drawer, mostly out of boredom, and only to read one of the fire and brimstone passages from Revelations. Those stories were well-suited the hell he found in life. But on the whole, he didn't really read the Bible.

He no longer believed in the God his parents had rammed down his throat with the threat of eternal damnation. Their version of the Lord had been an angry father who condemned the sinners of the earth to a dreary existence while waiting for their salvation in heaven.

The images young Kenny had of a stern man with a long white beard brandishing a lightning bolt in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other were undoubtedly a confused amalgamation of Moses, God and Zeus. Still, he'd been terrified to enter the front doors of the church as a child, sure that God would smite him dead because he hadn't gotten an A on a math test or kept his bed sheets as neat as a Marine's. He'd clasp his hands in prayer and declare his sins, fearing divine retribution with every confession. The only real punishment ever came from his earthly father, the Marine, not the man up above. His dad's disapproval and censure hurt just the same.

Ken had gone to church weekly, wearing a plain black suit and tie, until the middle of his junior year in high school. He'd followed the tenets his parents believed, had been confirmed in the faith and promised to obey God, but one day, he couldn't overlook the hypocrisy any longer.

His pious mother, who read the Bible daily, quoted scripture with a highball glass in one hand while spewing invectives about her husband. His devout dad, Richard Hutchinson, dallied with the wife of a co-worker and heaped verbal abuse on his wife even after they were divorced.

So much for living a life of Christian piety. At the age of seventeen, Ken Hutchinson had enough. By the time he entered the police academy, he'd seen far more cruelty, bigotry and hatred perpetrated in the name of the Lord than he had religious charitable works and good causes. People just didn't give a damn anymore.

Meeting David Starsky, a man raised partly Jewish and partly whatever belief system his open-hearted Aunt Rose had found spiritually beneficial, was one of Hutch's turning points. He found respect, honor and kindness hidden under a crooked smile, teasing blue eyes and a broad East coast accent. Starsky looked more like a cabbie than a holy man, but he lifted Hutch's soul in a way no minister or man of the cloth had ever done.

And if Starsky helped Hutch rediscover friendship and happiness, Captain Harold Dobey redefined what a good man, Christian or not, should be. He didn't look a thing like Charlton Heston as Moses, didn't have a white beard like the pictures in Sunday School texts or eat locusts with honey like John the Baptist, but Hutch was fairly certain that the Captain had a pipeline straight to the Big Guy in the clouds. Dobey was steady as a granite, his belief in a higher power such a solid foundation that nothing could knock him off.

Which was why seeing Dobey so completely shaken had driven Hutch away from his side. Seeing Starsky bandaged and still, lying like a corpse on the hospital bed, was bad enough. But when Dobey sat there praying, presumably expecting the worst possible outcome, Hutch couldn't stay a moment longer.

How he found himself in the hospital chapel was a mystery. It was ironic and not a little hypocritical that he'd sought the solace of a church at a time like this. He certainly didn't expect to hear God sending down condolences for letting Starsky get shot. He didn't even plan on railing against a vengeful and remote God who left his children alone on earth to fend for themselves.

Hutch just wanted quiet, and the chapel was one of the few places in the hospital where the sounds were muted. Starsky's room was full of noise—monitors beeping out a steady heart rate, the IV pumps alarming at the end of each hour, and the moist sucking whoosh of the ventilator pumping oxygen into Starsky's lungs.

The hallways were no better. Nurses hurried to care for each patient, their rubber soled shoes squeaking on the linoleum while the intercom blared pages for the doctors, and sirens screamed through the night carrying the sick and wounded into the ER.

Above all the noise, Hutch kept hearing the staccato bark of automatic weapon fire and the teeth-clenching grate of metal on metal. He'd been useless against the barrage of bullets. He was sure he could still feel the bits of glass hitting him when the windows of the Torino shattered. But nothing on earth would ever erase the sight of Starsky lying on his side, bleeding out.

Hutch shuddered, collapsing onto the single pew in the chapel, still holding the soft-sided Bible in his hands. He didn't remember picking it up, but something deeply buried had stirred when he'd touched the soft leather. Memories of Starsky in a hotel room, laughing at him for reading the Bible while drinking beer, came back to him. Starsky's laughter had the power to erase the images of the attempted assassination for just a moment.

He'd never admitted that he had been using the Bible as a cover so that he could peer over the top of the pages straight at Starsky's groin. Starsky had sprawled between the two single beds with his legs spread wide, the fabric of his jeans taut as a Marine's bed sheet, outlining the bulge of his cock.

_Oh, God._

Here he was, in God's house, thinking lustful thoughts and taking the Lord's name in vain.

"Way to go, Hutchinson," he whispered out loud. His wrist throbbed from the assault in the garage. Hutch took a deep breath, letting it out, feeling his need for Starsky stretch out the way it did when they'd approach a potential crime scene, one going to the front and the other going to the back. He could always feel Starsky at times like that—sense their connection and know his partner's whereabouts, even if he couldn't see him.

He knew exactly where Starsky was, in the hospital bed upstairs. Knew exactly what position he lay in, could feel the artificial push of the ventilator giving a breath, but he couldn't sense Starsky's essence. That's what scared him the most. It was almost as if Starsky had slipped between this world and the one beyond during the code blue, and Hutch had no idea how to pull him back.

What did he do now? Dobey was praying hard enough for the both of them, not to mention the efforts of Edith Dobey's prayer chain. They probably had more pull with God than Hutch did, anyway.

He looked down at the book in his hand. It wasn't written by a supreme being. Heck, it wasn't even a completely accurate picture of the ancient times, considering all the various translations, and the tinkering of the New Testament chapters during the first century. It was still a sacred book, revered by the faithful. He respected The Word, he just wasn't sure he could believe in God anymore.

He'd taken a class on reading the Bible in college, to try to capture some of the bliss—the rapture--that others found in the poetic verses. Try as he might, he only heard archaic language spelling out disaster and doom. Since he'd already accepted that as the truth, he'd dropped out mid-semester.

Despite all of his past failures with the good book, something about the Bible beckoned him. He knew there were stories of love, peace, and humility within the leather-bound volume. He rifled the gold-edged pages with his thumb, considering the old stories. There was the spectacle of St. Luke's words, read so often on Christmas Eve. It had been years since Hutch attended services but just five months ago, Starsky had insisted that they watch the yearly Charlie Brown special.

Half smiling at Starsky's eternal whimsy, Hutch flipped to the correct passage in the New Testament, and heard Linus van Pelt's lisping delivery in his head, _"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid."_

Sore afraid. That defined his mood to the letter. He was too afraid to leave the hospital for fear that Starsky would die, and afraid not to avenge his partner's shooting while he still could.

Paralyzing sadness welled up. Hutch looked up at the plain altar, seeking—he didn't even know what. Shelter? Hope? Some kind of calm that completely eluded him.

Even memories of he and Starsky together didn't wipe out the mind pictures of Starsky shot, curled into a fetal position as if seeking sanctuary in the wheel well of the Torino.

Letting the Bible slip into his lap, Hutch just accepted whatever page it opened to.

Psalm 10. _"Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?"_ he read aloud.

Well, now, there was a damned good question. Why indeed?

He looked up at the abstract stained glass above the wooden cross hanging over the altar. No gory rendition of Jesus nailed to the cross or luminous angels flying around in heavenly chorus. Just simple colors. Red: the Torino, and Starsky's blood. Blue: the color of Starsky's eyes. Green: the leaves on the tree Hutch had bought Starsky for the Christmas of '76.

Everything reminded him of his partner—his lover--and Hutch was filled with anguish.

He wasn't exactly certain when he'd first loved David Starsky. Maybe that first day at the Academy? Certainly by graduation when they'd both thrown their blue caps up in the air, arms around each other in mutual celebration. Definitely by the time Vanessa left Hutch, and Starsky took him out drinking to commiserate. Only Starsky never got drunk. He'd stood guard over his friend, letting Hutch drown his sorrows, and then poured him into the car to take him home.

Hutch wasn't even positive he recalled when they started making out. It'd been casual at first, partially because Hutch was on the rebound from Vanessa, and mostly because they didn't want to jeopardize their jobs. A couple of mutual hand jobs and much later, blow jobs. Starsky had amazing tongue action. However, he'd declared Hutch the best at sucking a cock.

Hutch leaned back against the pew, seeing Starsky caught up in euphoria just before he came into Hutch's mouth. Then Starsky would reach down with his left hand and grasp Hutch, fisting him ever so slow and sweet. He'd use his thumbnail to scrape the ridge along the underside, which never failed to raise the hairs on the back of Hutch's neck and bring him that much closer to orgasm.

He had unmercifully teased Starsky about his talented left hand, all the while craving the feel of Starsky's palm sliding down his shaft, taking him to heaven. The book he'd bought for Starsky as a joke, _Madame Olga's Self-Help Book on Becoming Right-Handed_ was probably still in the squadroom, filed under miscellaneous, exactly where Starsky had left it four years ago.

Hutch caught his breath, shaking. Sobs wrenched his chest, constricting his breathing, making it hard to think about anything but Starsky lying upstairs, unable to breathe on his own. He released the pent-up tears, wringing the despair from his heart. Crying hurt, just as it was cleansing.

"How long, God?" Hutch asked, surprised to hear his own voice. When had he started talking to God?

There was no reply, no echo. Just the calm acceptance that no matter what else happened, no matter what they discovered about the hit on Starsky, Hutch would wait for his partner. Would support his partner.

He took a slow breath, filling his lungs with air, just like the ventilator did for Starsky, and let his soul tentatively reach out into the cosmos. Immediately, he felt something brush the side of his neck and curve against the base of his skull, and a solid warmth in his hand.

_Starsky._

Inhaling, Hutch closed his fingers around the phantom hand, and held on.

The Bible had fallen to the floor while he cried and lay open to a chapter he'd never read before. Song of Solomon.

From where he sat, Hutch could make out the words, _"His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me…"_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You found me in the Bible?" Starsky lay back against the pillows of their bed, his healing scars still bright pink against the stubble of his chest hairs growing in. He didn't have much stamina yet, even kissing wore him out.

Hutch grinned, happier than he'd ever expected, or hoped, to be. He looked out the window of the house they'd rented in Malibu. The view was spectacular, summer waves spilling onto the endless sand, but nothing compared with the view of Starsky, bright eyed and alive, in the bed.

"In the Old Testament," Hutch said.

"Naturally. My people are all over Exodus." Starsky waggled his fingers in a 'gimme more' gesture. "C'mon, you started this story, finish it."

"Have you ever read The Song of Solomon?"

"Is this a trick question? I don't read the Bibl.." Starsky coughed, his face pinched tight with the spasm.

Hutch waited without comment while Starsky rode out the pain. He'd learned the hard way not to hover over Starsky. The first few days out of the hospital, when he'd basically forbade Starsky from lifting a finger, were over. All that had done was make Starsky surly and himself contrite. They'd made up—the old fashioned way, with slow kisses and a leisurely grope. Starsky couldn't get it up because of the morphine he was still on, so Hutch's spectacular orgasm had to make do for the both of them. Hutch had blown sky high mere seconds after Starsky ran his left thumbnail along the ridge on the underside of his cock.

Sated, Hutch had confessed to reading the Bible on a day in May, waiting for Starsky to come out of a coma.

"You're the one," Starsky began and had to sip some water before he could continue. "Who reads the Bibles in hotel rooms."

"Just that once, the time we were waiting for Drew to come after us."

"Nah, lotsa times." Starsky pressed carefully against the largest scar directly over his left lung, wincing. "When we were driving the trucks, to rendezvous with Durniak." He mimed flipping through the pages of an imaginary book with a bored expression, touching his chest absently, one eyebrow canted at a slight angle, and Hutch had to laugh, recognizing himself.

"I wasn't actually reading them. I was just killing time, and watching you."

"Me?" Starsky gave him a small, fond smile. "Shoulda just come right out and told me you wanted to get some. I woulda obliged."

"Sometimes, I liked just watching you," Hutch said, still watching, grateful for the opportunity to do so. God sure did work in mysterious ways.

Starsky rolled his eyes. "What was that again, Song of Solomon? Can you hum a few bars?"

"Heathen," Hutch said affectionately, opening the Bible he'd bought. After the—he refused to call it an epiphany—in the chapel, Hutch had begun reading the Bible regularly. He'd go down to the quiet haven in the hospital two or three times a week during Starsky's recovery, seeking the calm certainty he'd achieved that once. He wouldn't say he'd found religion, but he had discovered a whole new God. This was not his parent's vengeful deity, who sent his followers into battle. Hutch understood that all too well after years as a cop. No, he needed—accepted—the more peaceful God who had directed him to Starsky and let their love for each other do the rest.

 _"My beloved is mine…"_ Hutch read, looking straight at Starsky. _"And I am his: he feedeth among the lilies."_

"Oh." Starsky smiled, cupping his left hand around the back of Hutch's neck. "Song of Songs. I learned that in Hebrew school." He frowned slightly, going inward, obviously dredging up old lessons. Swaying rhythmically, Starsky began to chant softly in Hebrew, his voice rising and falling with the ancient words.

Hutch knew exactly what the angels sounded like.


End file.
